ADIOS Amigos: A Space Physics Odyssey

ADIOS Amigos: A Space Physics Odyssey

The best game I’ve played in a long time. What makes the game so good is the awesome physics model and the refreshing new game mechanics. Everyone that has once thought Angry Birds (or some other physics model based game) is great and is not afraid to face higher difficulty levels or roguelike games, should definitely try this. You can even increase speed of time and fly slowly to save fuel and perform gravitational slingshots. Easiest mode is winnable with rudimentary skills, but the highest difficulty level requires either really high skills or insane luck.

Real player with 147.5 hrs in game


Read More: Best Indie Family Friendly Games.


I am pleased to announce that ADIOS Amigos is the second contender for the iGOTY 2018 award.

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What a quirky yet pleasant surprise we have here with ADIOS Amigos. This is very refreshing in just such a chill way. But don’t get me wrong, there is certainly challenge and drive here too. This title takes some design risks, and I think they pay off handsomely.

Essentially, this is a run-based score-chaser where each level is a solar system. The whole thing is a physics sandbox, and I might add that the physics feels better than most, if not all, in this small genre. The core game mechanic is discovery. Every time you discover things on planets, you get points. These things could anything from dumpsters, to rocks, to aliens, to space junk. You get enough points, and then you are free to jump to the next level/solar system. Obviously if you are score-chasing, you want to stick around and try to get the harder points on the level. Or you could just skim the cream with the easy points and rush off.

Real player with 37.5 hrs in game

ADIOS Amigos: A Space Physics Odyssey on Steam

_space_train

_space_train

Welcome to _space_train!

In the not-so-far-distant future, humankind rolls through the stars atop the great, gleaming white tracks of a new age of trains. Trains, in space. _space_train is an online multiplayer social experience, as you work together with others and against antagonists to keep the engines of progress ticking over as they deliver you from station to station. Embark as a simple passenger or take a longer-term role as a member of staff in an asymmetric gaming experience like no other.


Read More: Best Indie Simulation Games.


_space_train on Steam

Space Launch Engineer

Space Launch Engineer

The game is completely bugged: I was able to complete the tutorial, but I can’t start any other mission. I can, however, access the “research” menu. And it features an interesting glitch: every time I run the game, open the research menu, quit the game (via the escape key twice), and run the game again, I gain 1000 reputation points and something like 500k gold coins. So even though I’m unable to play, I’m able to research stuff to the max :D

Still, unplayable in its current state.

Real player with 7.2 hrs in game


Read More: Best Indie Simulation Games.


The game is trash. The devs have abandoned it and bugs abound. Not to mention the extreme difficulty of the “game”. There are missions were you have to get your ship at a certain angle, but each time you click( one click per degree of attitude left or right) it deals damage to your ship. You can acheive the goal of nine or minus nine, but bigger numbers mean you destroy yuorself before getting the the target. Just don’t buy this. Don’t even add to your library if you see it for free. It’s THAT bad.

Real player with 1.4 hrs in game

Space Launch Engineer on Steam

Space Mercs

Space Mercs

Pretty fun little game. Intended as a bit of shoot-n-fly-n-go-back-to-work kinda game. No frills, no fuss, just have a little dogfight during your coffee break. Come back now and again to level up your weps etc, and slowly make your way through the missions… It’s not X-Wing or Wing Commander (yet)… But it’s in constant improvement, and the dev really listens to all feedback.

BTW: You can remap the controls to whatever you like, including controllers, joysticks, whatever… Ignore the muppety negative review, person probably didn’t find the options menu, on the main page.

Real player with 5.0 hrs in game

Awesome space shooter - fans of the genre could do well to pick it up.

Optimized for humble PC’s and runs very well even on integrated graphics from yesteryear. Dev is very engaged, supporting and friendly. Linux support on release day too!

Linux gamers with Vega GPU’s can take note that the volumetric fog might not be working at the moment. If you don’t see any ships or asteroids, disable Foggle for now. This issue will soon be fixed in an upcoming patch.

Real player with 3.4 hrs in game

Space Mercs on Steam

Space Reign

Space Reign

In the near future, as the crucial supply of deep space natural resources is controlled by several megacorporations, take command of a fleet as a private military contractor and complete security tasks for a corporation that suits you the best.

Establish your Company

Start with a single, smaller-sized ship, pledge your allegiance to one of the corporations, earn their trust by completing contracts and receive access to a unique, corporation-specific arsenal of ships and weapons.

Customize the Fleet

Each ship, ranging from smaller, deployable fighters to large cruisers, can be outfitted according to your needs, weapon by weapon, compartment by compartment, which allows you to tailor every vessel to a specific task - be it a recon corvette, close-combat cruiser, long-range missile destroyer, and so on.

Directly control any vessel in your fleet

Apart from manually controlling the designated flagship of your fleet, you have the option to jump in and out of any unit anytime, making sure to make the best use of it’s potential.

Conventional Weaponry

No lasers, no shields, no teleportation or time-travel. Just the power of pure fuel-based thrusters, armored hulls and conventional, near-future like weaponry based around kinetic projectiles and missiles.

Modular damage

Every module and compartment have their specific impact on the performance and capabilities of a vessel, therefore, ships do not have to be destroyed completely in order to win a battle. With the right weapon and a bit of luck, it is possible to disable critical modules, such as engines or main reactor, thus making them combat ineffective.

Sensors and detection

Before you go weapons hot, intel and reconnaissance is just as important as your arsenal. Without the proper use of sensors and detection mechanics, the enemy can easily have the upper hand, even in lower numbers and with inferior equipment.

Space Reign on Steam

Eterium

Eterium

http://youtu.be/a1BNYlHPoaw

If you know where to look you can find a fair amount of recently released (in the last 5 years) space combat games about, but not many of them are actually any good. I’m pleased to say Eterium is not one of those and is a fun game which holds your interest long enough to get through the campaign, which would probably take up at least 8 hours of your time if you go through all the pilot dialogue’s in between missions.

I was disappointed that I could not name my pilot, given that all dialogue is text based, they attempt to flesh out our character with a back story and is far from a silent protagonist. I was also surprised to see that you could not gain rank, after being demoted early on in the game I expected a way to actually recover and improve upon my rank during the campaign. I also found it hard to make my way up the kill board, may be my piloting skills were just not up to scratch and found myself consistently sitting at the bottom of the rankings.

Real player with 21.1 hrs in game

An excellent starfighter game–reminds me a lot of the old Wing Commander games.

You play as a starfighter pilot aboard a carrier, the U.E.A. Canopus. Fairly straight forward war story with pretty well structured missions and a bit of surprises here and there. The dynamic difficuality thing and game design even means you won’t always have the same play through. For example, you might not have to dog fight in an asteroid field or you might encounter patrol boats rather than a destroyer. Good touches! Design is more of a win than the plot.

Real player with 19.8 hrs in game

Eterium on Steam

OESE

OESE

  • ### Morlan’s shorts:

First of all this is more of a casual rogue-like with perma-death rather than a space-sim or simulation. Your main actions are offensive/passive/contact with the various encounters (mostly ships and some unexpeted..others, including planets to drill for power) and with these choices you try to gain power/shield/crew respectively to keep your ship going. That’s basically the gameplay. It’s simple and relaxing because you can wait before making a choice for as long as you like. It is a fun game.. pixel-art is really nice, there’s a constant background music that follows the mood of the encounter types, very atmospheric and pleasant to listen to, and little soud touches that hit the right spot.

Real player with 11.3 hrs in game

OESE is a game about a ship’s crew that fled from their original planet after an explosion, the game is about survival and how long you last while fleeing from your home planet, it has 4 factions which you can improve your relationship with depending of how you interact with certain encounters, it can be with the faction itself or related objects to the faction.

It is a really hard game because most of it is kind of a “waiting simulator”, but at the same time you need to understand the game and develop strategies in order to win the game or survive as long as possible, the game has 2 endings, which are related to the coordinates that you can get from each faction if you hit the reputation of 10 with them. Other things that make your journey hard, are your shield, power (principally), your crew and something that doesn’t depend on yourself but appears in the game, which is called Nox Cube (makes everything harder), when you encounter the cube you always need to give it something, and it drains almost all of your stats, which makes things pretty difficult.

Real player with 6.9 hrs in game

OESE on Steam

SOL: Exodus

SOL: Exodus

I am a big fan of space flight simulators. It doesn’t matter if it’s the X3 type where you control a vast trading empire as you roam the galaxy with your fleet or the the more simpler classic version where you just fly around in your ship and shoot other ships. That’s why a game like SOL:Exodus managed to excited me before I even knew anything about it beyond the genre. Trouble with getting excited over a genre rather than the individual game however is that more often than not, you buy a really bad game.

Real player with 21.8 hrs in game

What is SOL: Exodus?

it is a rather short but cool linear space sim. You control a small fighter against alot of enemies and usually have to protect some ship with too low hp (even on easy) the game has a rather neat hacking system tho, wich makes it a bit more interesting.

The campaign can be completed in 3hours on easy but will take maybe up to 10 hours on hard depending on your skill and luck as your teammates are really useless.

The good:

  • its a space arcade sci-fi fighter sim

  • hacking is new and interesting

Real player with 12.8 hrs in game

SOL: Exodus on Steam

Space Colonizers Idle Clicker

Space Colonizers Idle Clicker

Brief Review

PROS

Space Colonizers is an entertaining, amusing incremental idle game in the clicker genre. It has a bit of strategy and simulation tossed in for good measure.

As you wander the stars, you will use skills on cooldown, upgrade your spaceship, collect aliens which offer persistent bonuses for your journey, colonize planets, portal through black holes, and mine asteroids for gold and dark matter. Buildings and Research give you a substantial feeling of progress and persevere through each return to Earth.

Real player with 2971.3 hrs in game

Practically no end-game contant. Research scales very, very badly with the economy. Not one bit of content update since release. Meh.

Real player with 1195.8 hrs in game

Space Colonizers Idle Clicker on Steam

Space Journey

Space Journey

Considering its price, it is okayish to spend some time in this game if you admire ‘space’ related content like me. If you have discount, you can add it to your collection. Otherwise, it is not worth to spend your money.

Pros: Once you get used to controls, it will become fun and thrilling. Different atmosphere in each map. I suggest you to listen to music, and free your mind for a while (Any wave music and some songs from Skeler were my favorite while playing).

Cons: Literally, there is no gameplay, no special content and no save option. Limited play zone for a space related content. It may be hard to understand how to control at the beginning. Achievements on Steam didn’t work sometimes, so I needed to relog. Since it is just a simple time-killer game, you can neglect those.

Real player with 2.1 hrs in game

This game has amazing aesthetics but practically no gameplay. The aesthetics of the game almost make it worth playing. Nice sound design and amazing graphics! I would not recommend because it is not “entertaining” in the definition of the word, but I intend to keep an eye on this.

Real player with 0.2 hrs in game

Space Journey on Steam